Mysterious origins of naked bellies

One of famous Mata Hari postcardsDance costumes as mirrors of multiculturalism

| March 7th 2011 | VEDRANA SUNKO | Even though oriental dance is quite popular in the West there is little or no scholarly research of the subject. The dance originated in Muslim countries where displaying excessive skin is avoided and dancers are in most cases forbidden to perform in public. Therefore it is not surprising that there is little information on the development of dance costumes and dancing.

Ivana Medvedec is among the few researchers of oriental dance and its socio-cultural aspect. She is a dance instructor, who recently held a lecture on this particular subject. Through her research she concluded that today oriental dance costumes have more to do with Hollywood than tradition. With that in mind, oriental dance, as we know it today could be a perfect example for Edward Said's definition of Orientalism. The Western perception of Orient is mainly based on romanticized harem images of writers, painters and explorers who portrayed the East as an exotic place marked with female sensuousness.

 


The institution of the harem exerted a certain fascination on their imagination because it was forbidden to men. The lack of facts and resources accessible in the West created an image of a harem as a highly eroticized place. This was additionally supported by oriental paintings depicting scantily dressed women relaxing or socialising, and stories about women using oriental dances to attract the Sultans attention. According to Ivana Medvedec, women in harems actually rarely even saw the Sultan and they probably danced for other women. But the eroticized perception of belly dance is not really surprising, because the only women European merchants and explorers saw in the Orient were professional dancers or prostitutes.

"Everyday life"

Pornographic photos of dancers and a series of prurient postcards that were presented as depicting scenes of everyday life also support this image. This is especially so when these were published as parts of scholarly research in reputable publications.
However, Medvedec believes it is highly unlikely that women in Muslim societies held tea parties for their friends half naked.

The famous Mata Hari postcards probably had the greatest impact on the western perception of oriental dancers. The controversial feature about these postcards was her two-piece costumes. This is because all images of traditional oriental dancers available at the time showed one-piece gowns which concealed in many cases everything but feet.

There are theories that the costumes (two-piece, more revealing than not) worn by belly dancers today, as well as some of the dance elements, were taken from Hollywood film stars (Theda Bara, Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida as the Queen of Sheba to name a few).

Seeing how Hollywood made good profits selling the mystical oriental sensuousness, the local people of the orient started selling the western version of themselves to the enchanted western tourists.

Greta Garbo as Mata Hari i Rita Hayworth as Salome

Traditional Algerian (left) and turkish (right) dance costumes

Afganistan traditional dance costumes

Traditional egyptian (assuit) dance costume and Hollywood Dalila versionAlthough the story of oriental costumes resembles the dilemma which came first, the chicken or the egg, we can undoubtedly state that oriental dances and their costumes provide an excellent example for the research of multiculturalism and globalization trends. Traditional oriental dances are incorporating more and more elements of dances that come from other countries and the costumes have changed under the influence of the West. There are even belly dancers dancing to electronic music and combining their costumes with urban trends like dreadlocks and tattoos (American Tribal). But there is also a growing number of dancers turning to traditional one-piece costumes.

So, the real dilemma here is how did a traditional oriental dancer concealing everything turn into a skimpy Mata Hari.

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